In any case, I apologize for the ambiguity of my phrasing. I should have left off the IOW. In any case, not knowing Gadarene’s specific objections to TTRL, I was addressing a general trend I see (mostly in video rental customers), and not Gadarene specifically. Which I should have made clearer.
For further clarity, however, Gadarene’s response that he doesn’t like action films isn’t really to the point; I was talking about movies that value *plot *over character, which most of your video-renting public enjoys more than character-driven plots. Action films take place on both sides of that divide. 3:10 to Yuma is an example, I think, of a character-drive action movie.
Hence my Funny Ha Ha proviso…have you seen that film? Abounding in plot it is not.
Sometimes I think you live in a world, lissener, of inarguably and rigidly normative tastes. Your constant pronouncements from on high are unhelpful at best.
Basically, the American west was extremely individualistic, and a lot of people recognized that being an ‘outlaw’ meant crossing the wrong corporate interest. Like with Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War, he sided with the ranch family that didn’t end up with Governor Lew Wallace in their pocket. So yes, he was an outlaw, but so so was the other side. The Wild West was, well, wild. You should get out west now, drive for 3 hours without seeing a city. Then imagine you are out there, cars and airplanes don’t exist, and it’s got about 1/20th the population and no real infrastructure to speak of. Corruption was endemic, not all towns had law enforcement. In the case of Billy the Kid, he was intensely popular with the common people. He was seen as a sort of Robin Hood. Jesse James on the other hand was a war hero of the confederacy, and in Missouri at the time, there was a lot of sympathy with the confederacy. The government and the banks were seen as a part of the Northern corporate establishment, so they didn’t have so much of a problem with the James gang robbing the carpet baggers. The rural poor were highly unlikely to have any money in the banks themselves.
As for 3:10 to Yuma I find it interesting the differences in people who liked them. I liked the movie, but I thought it was a cheesy pulp action movie, of a kind with Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, more than with Assassination of Jesse James. I love Assassination but found 3:10 to be eminently forgettable.
Of movies from last year, let’s get off 3:10 to Yuma. I’d compare The Assassination. . . to There Will Be Blood. TWBB was primarily a character study, also dealt with the destruction of our myths (about capitalism, hard work, family, religion, etc.) It was moody, sometimes ethereal, impressionistic. By no means did it have classic scoring, nor would you call it “plot driven”.
But, TWBB was engaging. The acting was better. While it was character driven, there was just enough conflict and drama to keep the viewer engaged in the characters. It was not great because there was an awesome oil-rig fire in the middle of it.
I wouldn’t have liked **The Assassination. . ** more if they added a few more stagecoach robberies. I thought it stunk on the level on which it was supposed to be enjoyed.
I went into The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford with only the following information about the film (I already knew a bit about the real Jesse James):
It starred Brad Pitt as Jesse James and Casey Affleck as Robert Ford.
See 1.
I loved it. I found it a fascinating study on Fame and Celebrity worship, beautifully shot, and ultimately well worth viewing. It’s not everyone’s cup of P.G. Tips, but I thought it was quality cinema, and despite the bleak setting and tone, quite enriching as a film, for want of a better term.
Then again, I count Kung Pow: Enter The Fist amongst my favourite films, so I’m not allowed to offer pronouncements on the cinematic quality of a given film, according to my friends.
OK I do understand that back in those days there was a far smaller population than there is now, that towns were (sometimes) quite lawless, that you could go for days withour seeing another person, the US had /was just recovering from a disastrous civil war. All of this I’m OK with.
However, and I speak as a Briton, it appears to my possibly uneducated eyes that lawlessness was accepted as part and parcel of life in those times. This I find very hard to comprehend.
Surely to Og there must have been people out there who abhored the way things were, who thoroughly detested the “shoot 'em up, gun 'em down” way of life.
Despite all this, outlaws abounded, people were killed by the dozen, trains, coaches, banks etc were held up and robbed and this went on and on.
Why?
Not all the outlaws were war heroes or latter day Robin Hoods. Some were out and out cold blooded killers
Saw it. Fan. Agree that it was a top 5 in 2007 and that in 20 years will still be seen as so. I think Afleck got well deserved props but to my mind Pitt’s performance is underated. Yeah he won a best actor at Venice Film Fesitival but I think Hollywood has a little “thing” about his proper place. So no Oscar/GG noms.
You are the Director and say show subtle paranoid rages for no apparent reason, show untrusting crazy, psycho stuff - but don’t go over the top. Hold back, don’t chew the scenery and Pitt delivers it pitch perfect IMHO. He does it best at the end when he is shot - Does he know what is happening? Does he want it to? Is he playing a crazy game?
Chowder part of the reason is that all the Cowboy films laid end to end are probably longer than the Outlaw time of the old West that really ran from ~1865-~1890. If you think of it as there was a Bell Curve of real true Outlaw lawlessness as it moved to new territory and Settlement and Civilization came & pushed out bad guys - there was no real long, long period in any place with sizable population without Law.
Having said that, really the James Gang were like Bank robbers today - and Law enforcement was without modern communication, criminal and information techniques. They could hide and not be caught or take long to be caught and really the James Gang only lasted 10ish years (and many members had been killed or captured in that time) it was viewed by many as taking an outrageously long time to resolve at the time. The Civil War and hard feelings played into that. Further I am not sure how much, really, the James were a “Wild West” gang - Missouri wasn’t really the frontier and during their reign both James’ hid out in Baltimore.
I wonder if your perspective–native to a country with centuries of, for want of a better word (though it seems racist in this context, but anyway you get my drift) “civilization”–colors your perception.
The story of the Western–capitalized to signify specifically a genre of American literature/cinema–is the story of the expansion of the very types of people you describe into areas previously devoid of them. The Western is usually stories of the irreconcilable contradiction of the men who pulled civilization after them, unwillingly, while they were trying to escape it. Stories that take place along the border between the land of people “who abhored the way things were,” and the land without them.
My perspective is in some way coloured because of the fact that I’m English, on that I’ll agree.
Yes I 've seen many Western films, I’ve also read stories about the outlaws and to my English eyes it seems that rather than pulling civilization after them, they seemed hell bent on ignoring the vary basics of civilizations.
Admittedly there were those who who set up homes/ranches/farms and did their level best to carve out a new life
The outlaws however were greedy, blood thirsty buggers who had a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later…
It also appears that they much preferred robbing trains/banks etc than working for a living
I gotcha. It’s one of those movies that’s hard to watch if there is anything even remotely interesting going on around you. There’s a word for movies like that. Starts with a b …
Movie reviewers are generally very good about warning viewers that movies are boring. They use code phrases. the most obvious is: “deliberately paced” or “deliberate pacing”. Also indicative are “atmospheric” “poetic” and “moody.” And after reading these posts, I think I might add “character driven” to the list.
It’s remarkable to me that people can actually argue that even if I am bored by a movie, it still isn’t a boring movie. Also, it is an arrogant assumption to state that if I was bored it’s because I was expecting one thing and found something else. Newsflash : There’s no accounting for taste! Multitudinous shit exists in the world that I find boring as hell, and others find fascinating. I love college basketball, and am bored to tears by NASCAR. So, is college basketball exiting? Are the 270,00 fans who attended the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard idiots for liking it?
Thus my “unwillingly.” They continued (generalizing here, obviously) to move west, trying to escape civilization, but in doing so they inevitably planted its seeds.Some of the greatest Westerns* are about this irreconcilable contradiction–the loner or outlaw who has no use for civilization, whose outward path inevitably turns into a wagon trail.
It’s equally remarkable that people can take a generalization about a particular way that some people approach movies, and take it personally. Not so much arrogant perhaps as solipsistic. But whatever. It doesn’t *really *take all kinds, but we got em if we need em.
Well you have to remember the type of people who settled out west. They were the sort that were trying to escape ‘The Man’, in some way or another. To Homestead rather than work in a factory or on a plantation back east. They were a fiercely independent sort. It’s not that there were not people who cared about law and order, it’s just that it was a frontier being vanguarded by desperate settlers. The wealthy who came in to establish claims on large ranches and mineral resources, were not always so kind to the locals. The Pinkertons, who were a mercenary outfit that brought law and order to the people. That law was generally represented as corporate interests. Get the full series of Deadwood and watch that to get a glimpse of the why of it.
In the case of Jesse James, he was a war hero. In the case of Billy the Kid, he was a charming guy, who was generally very nice to the folks in the area where he was. He found himself on the wrong side of a war between two ranch families, and as a result, his side was named outlaws by the Governor of New Mexico Lew Wallis, and he was hunted down by the Sheriff Pat Garrett. So it’s hard to say that law and order wasn’t there. Ultimately Billy the Kid, was got by the law. When Billy the Kid lived, New Mexico was still a territory, not even a state yet. It wasn’t made a state until 1912. As such it has been a state for less than a century. It takes time to build a civil infrastructure. If it helps you to understand, New Mexico territory was larger than France, and went from scorching deserts in what is today Arizona, to 10-12000 foot peaks in Colorado, to salt flats in Utah, and the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico. You’re talking about a million square km’s of area with less than a million people.
Even today there is a strong live and let die, libertarian mindset out west. It was much more prevalent in the days before the Social Security Administration, and Medicaid. You’d have to understand the mindset of someone willing to leave civilization for the badlands in order to form a life for themselves, to really understand the culture of it.
Go up into the desert, get a house way out there. Sit on the front porch, and imagine how long it might take the police to get 45 miles from the nearest town to you, if an armed robber came into your home. Then imagine the police were on horses, and there was no such thing as 911.
Sorry, but reading upthread you can see why I’d imagine that to be the case. Anyway, Equipoise’s post strikes me as friendly an helpful, and not at all deserving of the snark you snapped at her. We should all maybe chillax a little. All she was doing was taking clues in your posts and suggesting something she thought you’d like, based on what you’d said. How that’s worthy of anything but thanks I don’t understand.
Reading further upthread would have disabused you of that notion.
This is what I’d said.
And I don’t need typical Hollywood action to get interested, but this just seemed retarded, in the sense of slow development. Agonizingly slow.
So steering me toward an action movie doesn’t really seem all that helpful. It seems like advice from someone who either ignores or discounts my views.
I just watched this film last night, and loved it.
I have never been a huge Brad Pitt fan, but he did a superb job, as did Casey Affleck. Affleck was spooky. I liked that squeaky thing he did with his voice.
Enjoyed Sam Rockwell, too.
I agree with Trunk that sometimes the story was a little hard to follow, but the acting and the visuals held things together.
The dialogue, the cinematography, the vistas, Nick Cave’s score, it all worked for me. That one bedroom scene had me on the edge of my seat, and James’ demise was so expected, yet surprising in its way.
But all this probably would have put my husband right to sleep.
If you think of it as there was a Bell Curve of real true Outlaw lawlessness as it moved to new territory and Settlement and Civilization came & pushed out bad guys - there was no real long, long period in any place with sizable population without Law.